When we look at candidates for president, the important issue should be what are the core values of this candidate, and what is this candidate’s vision for all Americans. We must look at the person, not the party.

PPP found Johnson would draw between 26 and 30 percent of GOP votes, between 12 and 16 percent of Democratic votes and win independents, in a race with either Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich as the GOP nominee.

McCain also warned from the Senate floor that in the next election incumbents from both parties would be in electoral danger. “I believe that for long enough we have done this, for long enough the American people, who are now in a more dire state then they have been since the Great Depression, are fed up with spending,” said McCain. “I say to all my colleagues … I think in the next election no incumbent is safe.”

Public Policy Polling tweeted yesterday that, “Paul performs the best of the Republicans against Obama among independents on almost every poll we ever do.” Independents are known to determine close elections; and Paul has a clear edge here over his Republican rivals.

In 1992, a savvy, yet highly erratic Texas billionaire named Ross Perot managed to take advantage of a recessionary economy and popular disgust with US politics and reap 18.9 percent of the popular vote. Step forward to 2008, and Obama promises “real change” from eight years of Republican rule as the economy is nose-diving. Now, three years of Obama has brought too little change and only additional widespread disillusionment with the entire US political system. Going into the election in 2012, the incumbent Democrats are in ideological disarray and will get the blame for continued economic malaise and the favour-the-rich Republicans will never win the popular vote with the US rich/poor gap at a record width and social tension rising. In short, conditions for a third party candidate have never been riper. Someone smart enough to sense this and with a strong programme for real change throws his hat in the ring early in 2012 and snatches the presidency in November in one of the most pivotal elections in US history, taking 38 percent of the popular vote. A new political order is born.

Is there an opening for a third-party candidate? No and yes. With fewer Americans feeling the need to hurl themselves into party politics, it’s hard to imagine much interest in creating a new one. But there’s almost certainly a market for an independent candidate — perhaps a rich, Ross Perot type (minus the weirdness) who embodies reform and rejects party fealty. Sounds like Bloomberg, but he has his hands full.